Sentury ramping up Thai factory

RAYONG, Thailand (April 28, 2016) — Qingdao Sentury Tire Co. Ltd.'s factory near Bangkok is ramping up production toward the plant's rated capacity of 12 million car and light truck tires a year, the Chinese tire maker said recently.

The plant, in which Qingdao Sentury invested an estimated $400 million, produced its first tires last August and is now moving toward full capacity.

Sentury Tire (Thailand) Co. Ltd., as the Thai company is known, is located in the Li Sheng rubber industrial park in Rayong Province, about 100 miles southeast of central Bangkok. It's also close to the industrial port city of Laem Chabang.

Sentury claims the facility is “the most advanced…4.0 smart [tire] factory in the world.”

The plant uses a $35 million automated materials-handling system, provided by Cimcorp Oy, that includes six independent automation lines, each consisting of monorail systems for the unloading of the tire-building machines and transfer of green tires to the curing buffers; green tire buffer storage; spotting stations; and monorail transfers for press delivery.

The system covers the handling of passenger tires from the tire-building machines to the curing presses, as well as finished tire sorting, palletising, warehousing and shipping.

Established in 2009, Sentury manufactures and sells tires under the brand names Landsail, Delinte and Sentury, with 13 ranges and more than 400 sizes. It is represented in North America by Sentury Tire Americas of Miami.

Earlier this year Sentury Tire Americas introduced a new limited tread life tire and road hazard warranty — ranging from 30,000 to 40,000 miles — for select Delinte and Landsail brand tires, effective on claims filed on or after March 1.

This story includes reporting by Shahrzad Pouirriahi of European Rubber Journal, a United Kingdom-based sister publication of Tire Business.